Happy: A Memoir (Iowa Connection)

His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every girl, the hard-partying kid everyone called Happy. In the spring of 1997, he had his first stroke. For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcohol and drug abuse. His charming and carefree exterior masked his self-destructive and sometimes cruel behavior as he endured two more brain bleeds and a crippling depression. After undergoing brain surgery, he is nursed back to health by his free-spirited artist mother, who once again teaches him to stand on his own. Alive with unexpected humor and sensuality, Happy is a hypnotic self-portrait of a young man confronting the wreckage of his own body; it is also the deeply moving story of a mother’s redemptive and healing powers. Alex Lemon’s Technicolor sentences pop and sing as he writes about survival—of the body and of the human spirit. -- Publisher description

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The Moon Looked Down (Iowa Author)

An Americana romance from bestselling author Dorothy Garlock, set against the backdrop of WWII. 

Young Sophie Heller and her family sacrificed everything to escape Nazi Germany and find safety in America, but as war fever sweeps their small town of victory, Illinois, they become targets of suspicion, whispered accusations of treason, and a vicious attack. Sophie's father won't go to the law for help, but Sophie, who now works for the town newspaper, vows to expose those behind the threats no matter what it takes. Her only ally is Cole Ambrose, a teacher whose quiet strength slowly earns her trust...and hides secret pain. As hidden enemies move in to destroy the Hellers once and for all, will Sophie and Cole's defiance...and unexpected love...be enough? -- from author's website

Blurbs from the Backlist highlights items in the Des Moines Public Library collections that are currently available, meaning, you could take one home today!

A Good Day's Work (Iowa Connection)

Despite beautiful landscapes and bountiful harvests, farming is hard work and always has been. The Great Depression in rural America, which began in the 1920s and lasted until World War II, made it still harder. At a time when tractors were replacing horses and the family farm was giving way to the large, single-crop enterprise, the struggle to survive and modernize in a period of economic scarcity was especially sharp. 

In A Good Day's Work, Dwight Hoover, who grew up on an Iowa farm in this era, recalls the events of day-to-day life on a single farm, offering detailed descriptions of daily work in each of the year's four seasons. A Good Day's Work is a fascinating if grim reminder of what it was like to be a child with adult responsibilities. Mr. Hoover's unusual memoir recalls the rough edges as well as the happy moments of rural life. It is an honest re-creation of a world that was vanishing. -- Publisher's description

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Prairie City, Iowa: Three Seasons at Home (Iowa connection)

Weary from the journalistic treadmill of "going from one assignment to the next, like an itinerant fieldworker moving to his harvests" and healing from a divorce, Douglas Bauer decided it was time to return to his hometown. Back in Prairie City, he helped on his father's farm, scooped grains at the Co-op, and tended bar at the Cardinal. The resultant memoir is a classic picture of an adult experiencing one's childhood roots as a grown-up and testing whether one can ever truly go home again. Bauer's book is neither a wistful nostalgia about returning to a simpler time and place nor a patronizing look at those who never leave the town in which they were born. What emerges is an unsentimental yet loving account of life in the Midwest. Not just a portrait of Prairie City, Iowa, but of everyone's small town, everywhere. -- Publisher's description

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My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Iowa connection)

Experience the deadly din of modern warfare and the inspiring leadership and courage of legendary First Sergeant Brad Kasal in this riveting new book. It's a page-turning, first-hand account of Kasal's courageous mission to rescue fallen comrades under intense enemy fire during the Battle of Fallujah-actions that earned him the distinguished Navy Cross, America's second highest military award. This stunning, unforgettable account shows an American hero rising to the challenge of world events with leadership, valor, and loyalty. -- from the publisher

You may find similar titles on our From the Frontlines booklist.

Blurbs from the Backlist highlights items in the Des Moines Public Library collections that are currently available, meaning, you could take one home today!

Four Days to Glory (Iowa Connection)

Somewhere beyond the circle of money, glitz, drugs and controversy that characterizes professional sports in America, there exists the remnants of the ideal. In Iowa, that ideal survives in the form of high school wrestling, a way of transforming the local virtues--modesty, privation, hard work--into sporting glory. To be a wrestling champion in Iowa is to achieve greatness--individual glory where the only back to pat is your own.

For Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere, though, the stakes have been raised. Already three-time state champions in differing weight classes, each boy has a chance in his senior year of high school to do something historic--to become a "four-timer," joining the most elite group in the sport and essentially ensuring his status as an Iowa wrestling deity. For Jay, a ferocious competitor who feeds off criticism and doubt, a victory would mean vindication over the great mass of skeptics waiting for him to fail. Dan, the kid from a farm near the tiny town of Coggon (population 710), carries other burdens. For his community, for the hard-driving coach who doubles as his father, and for his own triumph over his personal demons, another title is the only acceptable outcome.  

Blurbs from the Backlist highlights items in the Des Moines Public Library collections that are currently available, meaning, you could take one home today!